First-time dad moved by family's return

When you grow up in a military family like I did, you find out pretty quick all you want to know about waiting at the airport for teary family reunions.

If we weren't flying back to the States from extended tours of duty overseas with my Navy dad, we were sitting in a concourse anticipating his return from one of his 13-month-long assignments building — and then blowing up — all sorts of ports, bridges, highways and air fields for the Marines in Vietnam.

Still, only the elation we felt when he finally arrived home from his first deployment can compare with what I experienced this past weekend when my little boy, Owen, and his mom touched down in Newport News after more than 3 weeks visiting her family in South America.

I was so ready for them to come home that my heart jumped when I saw Miriam look up and smile in recognition as she came through the gate. And when Owen finally noticed me, his face lit up as much as mine — and that sent him running toward me with such happy cries of "Daddy! Daddy! I found you!" that I felt not only an overwhelming sense of gratefulness and good luck but also echoes of my own childhood reunions with my father.

"Owen!" I said, as he crashed into me with an impassioned hug.

"I found you, too!"

This wasn't the first time that my son and wife have taken trips to see relatives living outside the country.

Yet even before the first week ended, it was tough looking at the calendar and knowing there were still more than 2 weeks to go before we would all be back together.

Every time I opened the dishwasher and saw my plates piling up by themselves — or sorted through the laundry without coming across any of Owen's "Thomas the Tank Engine" T-shirts or pj's — that nagging feeling of incompleteness deepened. Then there were all the train and dinosaur toys left exactly where they had last been played with — plus the constant reminder you get when you move around a usually lively house and hear nothing else but silence.

Skype and Facebook helped keep us connected in ways unimaginable not long ago. And I was glad to hear Owen had been discovered sitting at his great aunt's computer, clicking curiously at the screen and murmuring, "Daddy? Daddy? Where are you?"

But even on the days when our connection was so good I could sing "One little monkey jumping on the bed!" — then watch him jump on a bed more than 1,800 miles away — I missing being there during several unpredictable spurts in his development.

"His scar from where the dog got him is still red. But it looks like it's healing."

Just as surprising was his sudden shift from being a smiling but usually untalkative kid to a lad who was downright chatty.

But as much as Owen talked my ear off after running back into my arms late last Sunday night, it didn't last long. His mouth stopped and his eyes closed less than 5 minutes into the drive home.

It wasn't until the next morning, as he followed me around the house, that I discovered how much he had been thinking of coming home, too.

"That's my car. Those are my trees. Those are my birds," Owen said, reclaiming his life in Hampton as he looked out the window.

"Daddy, I have a lot of stuff!"

I had a big role on his list, too, but I was still surprised by the tears he shed as I started out the door for work. He cried and trembled just as much when I said goodbye after meeting him and his mom for lunch.

Exactly how I looked as I kissed him and turned to go, I don't know. I tried to smile as I winced.

But it was hard not to think of him, of my own pangs as a kid and how my own dad looked every time he had to leave us for something much more dangerous and important.